Customer Reviews

The Acting Person: A Contribution to Phenomenological Anthropology (Analecta Husserliana)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Vatican has attempted to halt continued dissemination of the only English edition of The Acting Person with good reason. Apparently, it is not a faithful translation of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II's Polish original. The translator, who is herself a phenomenologist but thinks differently from the author has changed crucial passages of his work. The second Polish edition which has been translated into French and Spanish is apparently accurate, for those who can read those languages. I myself am looking for one of these, preferably Spanish, but have not been able to find one. Two good overviews of Karol Wojtyla's philosophical anthropology can be found in Kenneth Schmitz's At the Center of the Human Drama and Jaroslaw Kupczak's Destined for Liberty.

"The Acting Person" is a modified version of Karol Wojtyla's "Osoba i Czyn" originally published in 1969. Ana-Teresa Tymieniecka, the editor, changed important philosophical terminology (suppositum, esse, etc.) in order to push Wojtyla's book towards her personal approach to phenomenology. Even more, Tymieniecka wrote "The Acting Person" is the "Definitive text of the work established in collaboration with the author"... From 1979 to 1999 the controversy on this "definitive text" was intense.Tyemeniecka argued she had the full authorization of doing what she did and criticized the complaints from the Commision named by John Paul II for analizing the english translation (The members of the Commision were: Marian Jaworski, Andrzej Poltawski and Tadeusz Styczen). Even the official translator who worked close to Tyemeniecka, Andrzej Potocki, accepted she made important changes far from the convictions and intentions of the author. The controversy should finished in 1994 with the publication of Karol Wojtyla's "Osoba i czyn oraz inne studia antropologiczne" by T. Styczen, A. Szostek and others in the publishing house of the Catholic University of Lublin (TKUL). However, many scholars did not know the new and fully authorized edition. In 1999 Giovanni Reale and Tadeusz Styczen, with the full agreement of John Paul II, published "Persona e Atto. Testo polacco a fronte" in Rusconi Libri (Santarcangelo di Romagna 1999) and latter they published it again in Bompiani (Milano 2001) and in Karol Wojtyla's "Metafisica della Persona. Tutte le opere filosofiche e saggi integrativi" (Bompiani, Milano 2003). [...].

If anyone is interested in finding a copy of The Acting Person, log onto the website address: http://www.i-logic.com/personalism/jp2/actingperson.htm

This book should be read by anyone in academic philosophy. It is a masterpiece yet to be discovered by mainstream american philosophers. It's just too bad that it is not more readily available.

This book is perhaps the most significant philosophical work since Cajetan's commentary on the Summa. Working from consciousness as a bridge between (1) the internal person and (2) the person's externally-manifested actions, Wojtyla insightfully demolishes the idealism-empiricism split which led Descartes and countless others into skepticism. The book is also historically significant for two other reasons. First, JPII's condemnation (see Veritatis Splendor) of an entire system of moral theology is based on the thought of this book. Second, the book establishes a philosophical basis for the claims about human dignity made at Vatican II, which Wojtyla was attending when he wrote the book. Finally, since his method is phenomenological, his introspection is pretty much self-evident, and thereby philosophically unassailable.
I have only read the first half of it in the (apparently controversial) English edition, but even that much was unusually insightful. Admittedly, I had to read certain sections about six times to understand his terminology, and to make sure that I wasn't being fooled by a vague translation, but once you see what he is actually saying, the scope and moment of the work becomes apparent.

Wojtyla's original version of the Acting Person is now known as his Opus Magnus of his philosophical work. I will skip writing regarding what this book is about since reviewers below did a good job however I would like to mention some interesting facts such as that Wojtyla wrote his original work during the Second Vatican Council and, specifically, as he mentioned in his Gift & Mystery book sequel, wrote in a chapel where His Most Blessed Sacrament was.

Furthermore, regarding the differences from the Anglo translation hitherto being reviewed, there is a preface from Wojtyla himself-which he felt in obligation to do- that mentions that the Anglo book is a bit different:

The Acting Person " in comparison with the first and only Polish edition...contains a certain number of changes however the basic conception has remained unaltered" ( Wojtyla's preface to the Anglo work).

The "certain number of changes" as Wojtyla describes are in around 900 places in the Anglo version as Kupczak once noted.

Since Wojtyla wrote the aforementioned preface there is now a more definitive Polish edition; the 1994 3rd Edition from the University of Lublin. You can obtain the latter from a Polish bookstore website which is how I got a copy however I noticed that Amazon might be able to get you a copy as well -use the search option.

Regarding the Spanish version as some reviewers mentioned below, it is not any different from the Anglo version- and hence not imperative unless you can't read English- because it is an exact translation from the latter. The title of the Spanish version is called Persona y Acción. You might still get a copy from the source - B.A.C ( Bliblioteca de Autores Cristianos). That's how I got mine and through their website I obtained a brand new-out-of print-hardcopy of Persona y Accion for $46 bucks including S&H.

Overall, the Anglo version is not a bad book to read and as Wojtyla himself wrote regarding it: the Anglo version " has given a definitive form from my text" ( Wojtyla/JPII). If you still concerned about the Anglo version because of its 900 or so changes than learn Polish and buy Osaba i czyn.

I am the person who posted the April 6 comment giving the name of a bookstore where I thought a copy of this book was still available. Please note that Regent Bookstore in Canada no longer has this book. Apparently, I purchased the only available copy. Sorry if I got your hopes up.

Es un libro excelente porque profundiza en lo que es la persona humana a través de su actuación; a la vez que muestra cómo el actuar humano "hace" de alguna manera a la persona. Yo lo he leído en español, y sé que la edición que busco es la que el autor revisó. La busco para estudiarla con mayor detenimiento. Agradeceré cualquier noticia sobre el dónde puedo encontrarlo: soy profesora de Filosofía.

Wojty'a's thesis adviser, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., wrote of his student: "Writes much; says little." That summarizes this book, too.

In his Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought (available online gratis), Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange writes that Thomism

"can assimilate all the elements of truth to be found in the three principal tendencies which characterize contemporary philosophy. Let us begin with an outline of these three tendencies.
"The first of these is agnosticism, either empiric agnosticism, in the wake of positivism, or idealist agnosticism, an offshoot of Kantianism. Here belongs the neo-positivism of Carnap, Wittgenstein, Rougier, and of the group called the Vienna Circle. [1330] In all these we find the re-edited Nominalism of Hume and Comte. Here belongs also the phenomenology of Husserl, which holds that the object of philosophy is the immediate datum of experience. All these philosophies are concerned, not with being, but with phenomena, to use the terms of Parmenides in pointing out the two roads which the human spirit can follow."

Yet on pg. xiii Wojty'a accuses himself of being "certainly a very poor student" "of St. Thomas."

But why?

In Memory and Identity, Wojty'a basically admits that his phenomenology/personalist approach is "not set out from such [Thomistic] 'realist' presuppositions" and thus its conclusions "end up in a vacuum":

"If we wish to speak rationally about good and evil, we have to return to St. Thomas Aquinas, that is, to the philosophy of being. With the phenomenological method, for example, we can study experiences of morality, religion, or simply what it is to be human, and draw from them a significant enrichment of our knowledge. Yet we must not forget that all these analyses implicitly presuppose the reality of the Absolute Being and also the reality of being human, that is, being a creature. If we do not set out from such 'realist' presuppositions, we end up in a vacuum."

Does anyone know where I can find this book? (Personally, I've heard that it is quite Phenomenol.)

This text is well presented by the publisher and its contents do inform the reader on the classical thought patterns and their underlying philosophical presuppositions that made Pope John-Paul II the man of our times who was and is an intellectual and spiritual force to be recond with.